Ocracoke Seafood Company
Home of Ocracoke Fresh
416 Irvin Garrish Highway
Ocracoke, NC 27960
Phone: (252)928-5601

Ocracoke Fish Cakes

Old Ocracoke recipes prefer Drum. For “dinner” or the afternoon meal islanders loved boiled Drum, potatoes, hard boiled eggs, fresh onions and fried out salt pork – of which a portion was used for gravy. For the evening meal, all ingredients were combined by hand and made into fish cakes which were fried in the grease from the salt pork.

Today the recipe might read:

Dinner
Cut fish into large chunks, salt and let stand for 30 minutes. Then boil until done.

Boil potatoes (separately)
Hard boil eggs
Fresh green onions
Bacon, slice of ham or salt pork. Cooked till crispy (for the die-hard O’cockers)

Substitute for Drum: Sheapshead, Rock/Sriped Bass or Black Drum

Supper
Combine by hand leftover fish, potatoes, onions, eggs, and bits of bacon (optional).
Fry in vegetable oil or bake in oven.